Aiyana Rettinghouse
A tangerine leopard gecko I took care of junior year with a couple of other classmates (Jenny and Tiaja). She was assigned to us as a year-long group project for Environmental Leadership. At the end of Junior year I housed her over the summer. In the beginning of Senior year she was happily residing in my living room, so my family kept her and told Patricia that she was in a better place.
Luna
Migration of Birds
It started just now with a hummingbird
Hovering over the porch two yards away
then gone.
It stopped my studying.
I saw the redwood post
Leaning in clod ground
Tangled n a bush of yellow flowers
Higher than my head, through which we push
Every time we come inside -
The shadow network of the sunshine
Through its vines. White-crowned sparrows
Make tremendous singing in the trees
The rooster down the valley crows and crows.
Jack Kerouac outside, behind my back
Reads the Diamond Suites in the sun.
Yesterday I read Migration of Birds;
The Golden Plover and the Arctic Tern.
Today that big abstraction’s at our door
For juncos and the robins all have left,
Broody scrabblers pick up bits of string
And in this hazy day
Of April summer heat
Across the hill the seabirds
Chase Spring north along the coast:
Nesting in Alaska
In six weeks.
Written and edited for Molly's class. This poem was modeled after the works of the beat generation. Specifically a known poem by Gary Snyder called Migration of Birds. The whales refer to the senior class of 2014 who are known as the ACLC troop of 2014. The original Migration of Birds poem is also below.
Beat Poem
Migration of Whales
It started just now with a whale
Swimming just 6 yards away then approaching
It stopped my writing
Looking up at the troop
Bundled about the couch
On every slouch and sloop
Backpacks piled higher than my head
Get kicked and moved-
In the cushions the orcas play
Tackling and shouting about the waves
The Minkes at a table a little ways out
Gossiping and exclaiming their days about
Friends in the middle of the hase
Giving me a look to hurry and join
The amusement that I enjoy most days
The belugas and fins and blues and sies
Around me the distraction is in the center
The bell rings and they come together
All thats left is a humpback or two
And in this lazy busy obstruction
Of all the whales bounding across the room
The excitement in a bunch currently facing abduction
The troop is on its way
On this good day of fun astray
Solar Array
This was my science fair project in freshman year. This is a solar array. All of the mirrors on the board are pointed at the box on the end of the pole. My mission in making this instrument was to burn a cotton ball with the power of the sun. To adjust the mirrors I would cover all but one with sizable sticky notes and use the screw in the center back of each one to lift or flatten it to aim the sun at the box. Unfortunately all that came out of the project was smoking dead grass and the blinded eyes of everyone who walked in front of the board. In the long run, I deemed the project a scientific success, even though it wasn't an expirimental success.